MIT MN506 System Management Project: Monitoring Tools Analysis

This project, part of the MN506 System Management unit, focuses on analyzing and demonstrating the use of two system monitoring tools: atop and lsof. The project begins with a brief overview of the project's objectives, which is to explore the functionalities of the chosen monitoring tools and how system administrators can utilize them for system process monitoring. The document then details the installation process of atop, an interactive ASCII full-screen performance monitor, and lsof (LiSt Open Files), a tool to identify which files are opened by which process. The project showcases the features of atop, including options to view memory information, process status, scheduling tasks, disk activities, and variable process information, and features of lsof, such as listing user-specific open files, finding processes running on specific ports, and listing network connections. The project concludes with a summary of the features and functionalities of the two monitoring tools.

SYSTEM MANAGEMENT

Table of Contents
1 Project Outline.............................................................................................................................2
2 Monitoring Tool...........................................................................................................................2
3 Tools Installation and Accessing Features.................................................................................2
3.1 Install atop............................................................................................................................2
3.2 Install LOSF.........................................................................................................................4
4 Summarize...................................................................................................................................4
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1 Project Outline
This project chooses the two monitoring tools from provided requirement table and
explore in depth the utility provided by the monitoring tools and how the tools can be used by
the system administrators. Here, user choose atop and LOSF monitoring tools to monitoring
the system processes. These are features are will be investigated.
2 Monitoring Tool
 LSOF
 ATOP
3 Tools Installation and Accessing Features
3.1 Install atop
Atop is an interactive ASCII full-screen performance monitor to view the load on a Linux
system. It is capable of showing the occupation of critical hardware resources like CPU,
memory, disk. It also shows which processes are responsible for the indicated load with
respect to cpu and memory load on process level ("How to install atop in Linux", 2018).
 By typing the below command
sudo apt-get install atop
installation screen short attached below
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 After installation is completed, add atop into system start up
chkconfig –add atop
chkconfig atop on –level 235
atop
Output screenshot attached below
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Features
1. Using ‘m’ option
Using this 'm ' option, it will display the memory relation information about all
running process.
atop –m
Output screen short attached below
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2. Using ‘a’ option
By using this ‘a’ option, it will show the status of all current running process.
atop –a
output screen shorts attached below
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3. Using ‘s’ option
It displays the scheduling task information.
atop –s
output screenshort attached below
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4. Using ‘d’ option
It will display the disk activities on the system. Disk activity is shown as
amount of data that is being transferred by read/write columns.
atop –d
Output screen short attached below
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5. Using ‘v’ option
It shows the variable information about the running processes.
atop -v
6. Using ‘D’ option
It will Sort the current list in the order of disk accesses issued.
atop –d
7. Using ‘p’ option
It shows the window accumulation per program.
atop –p
8. Using ‘u’ option
This screen shows which users were/are active during the last interval and
indicates how many processes each user runs/ran
atop –u
9. Using ‘y’ option
It will display the single or multiple threads of the all running process.
atop –y
output screen short attached below
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3.2 Install LOSF
lsof meaning ‘LiSt Open Files’ is used to find out which files are open by which
process. As we all know Linux/Unix considers everything as a files (pipes, sockets,
directories, devices etc). One of the reason to use lsof command is when a disk cannot be
unmounted as it says the files are being used. With the help of this command we can easily
identify the files which are in use ("How to use the Linux lsof command to list open files |
alvinalexander.com", 2018).
Features
1) List User Specific Opened Files
lsof -u tecmint
2) Find Processes running on Specific Port
lsof -i TCP:22
3) List Only IPv4 & IPv6 Open Files
lsof -i 4
4) List Open Files of TCP Port ranges 1-1024
lsof -i TCP:1-1024
5) Exclude User with ‘^’ Character
lsof -i -u^root
6) Find Out who’s Looking What Files and Commands?
lsof -i -u tecmint
7) List all Network Connections
lsof –i
8) Search by PID
lsof -p 1
9) Kill all Activity of Particular User
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kill -9 `lsof -t -u tecmint`
4 Summarize
This project chooses the two monitoring like atop and LOSF monitoring tools. These two
tools are used to provide the system processes information and it can be used by the system
administrators. These are features are executed successfully.
References
How to install atop in Linux. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.linuxhelp.com/how-to-
install-atop-in-linux/
How to use the Linux lsof command to list open files | alvinalexander.com. (2018). Retrieved
from https://alvinalexander.com/blog/post/linux-unix/linux-lsof-command
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